Global sea levels are rising steadily as a result of climate change and the IPCC believes the deluge has already begun. What will it mean for humankind? And what changes will this bring to our coasts and our way of life? By DER SPIEGEL Staff

Flooding on St. Mark's Square in Venice Oct 30 /

A few weeks ago, Ioane Teitiota, a resident of the island nation of Kiribati, climbed into a fishing boat with six other men for a trip to visit relatives in London, Paris and Poland. The passage took eight days, and when they arrived, London, Paris and Poland were virtually empty.The three settlements on Kiribati's eastern atoll Kiritimati were once given those names by the British explorer James Cook. And now, London, Paris and Poland are halfway submerged. The strip of land has become so narrow that waves rolling in from one side crash into the sea on the other. The dikes, the mangrove breakwaters and the cement walls weren't enough, leading the residents to abandon their homes to the ocean. London, Paris and Poland have gone under.The country that Teitiota calls home has a population of around 110,000 people who are spread across 32 atolls and an island, small dots in the vast blue ocean that are distributed across an area as large as India. The country's average altitude isn't even 2 meters above sea level. Fourteen-thousand kilometers away from Teitiota's fishing boat, on the other side of the world, London, Paris and Gdansk are located safely and securely above sea level. It is a completely different world. There is, in fact, only one thing connecting Europe's coastal cities with the Pacific atoll of Kiritimati.The sea.There is only one of them. It is the same water in Miami, Shanghai or the North Sea island of Hallig Hooge. And the sea is rising. Nobody knows for sure how quickly or how high the ocean level might ultimately become. But rise it will.On Monday, the United Nations Climate Change Conference began in the Polish city of Katowice, the focus of which is the implementation of the Paris Agreement -- following a summer of possibly record-breaking droughts and extreme hurricanes.Three years ago, the international community agreed in Paris to limit the average global temperature increase to significantly below 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. But the deluge has already begun. And it won't go away after 150 days like the one in the Bible. This one is here to stay. It will take millennia for the polar ice caps to completely disappear, and perhaps they never will. But the fact that the sheet of ice covering Greenland is melting and the ice sheets of Antarctica are shifting, their edges breaking off more quickly: All of that can already be measured today.There is a point of no return for the climate, and that point already lies behind us. The carbon dioxide is already in the atmosphere and it will remain there for longer than human civilization exists. And it will continue to warm the Earth's climate. It is all really quite simple and follows the laws of physics: Water expands when it warms. Since industrialization, the Earth has warmed by about 1 degree Celsius, with the pace of warming having increased over the last several decades. Without an immediate and significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, NASA calculations indicate that an average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius will have been reached by the middle of this century. A further increase to 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, according to a report compiled by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, would result in sea levels rising by 5 meters (16.5 feet), though it might take hundreds of years for that level to be reached. The uncertainties inherent in such calculations are, of course, significant. But determined action taken by the international community would render such uncertainties superfluous.Every coastline is in danger of flooding, whether in Kiribati, Manhattan, Dhaka or Rotterdam. We are all, if you will, in the same boat.

New York SubmergedMemories of vast floods are deeply embedded in human memory. For the Mesopotamians, floods were a punishment, an apocalypse that would swallow up all that was impure. Christians transformed the flood into a kind of global baptism, a vision of hope: Noah didn't sit around bemoaning his fate, he grabbed his tools and started preparing.Building an ArkThat's what this text is about. Around the world, coastal residents, municipal authorities, urbanists, insurance underwriters and port engineers are hard at work building an ark. They are evaluating such concepts as floating homes and salt-resistant seeds, intelligent dikes and porous roads.They are wondering whether it really makes sense that a quarter of the 100 busiest airports in the world are fewer than 10 meters above sea level. In Indonesia, they are making plans to move the capital city while the residents of Micronesia are buying land to ensure that they don't disappear. All are looking for ways to escape the water.But what do we actually know today? What do we expect to happen and when? Who will be hit hardest? What can, what must, be done now? Is it sufficient to rely on technical solutions or do we have to radically change our approach?A team of eight DER SPIEGEL reporters traveled to New Orleans and Bangladesh, to Venice and the Dutch island of Texel, and to Ioane Teitiota in the Pacific. Not to document the end of the world, but to emulate Noah's dove and its search for an olive branch. To search for models, initiatives, experiments and, ultimately, hope.South Tarawa (Kiribati), 2 meters above sea levelWearing nothing but shorts, Ioane Teitiota is lugging sandbags on the beach to stop the water that threatens his life and his country. He heaves them on top of each other, one after the other, constructing a wall together with tree-trunks and leaves in the hopes of protecting all he has from the ocean.His home is a shack made of boards and bamboo, built in the shadow of a trio of screw pines. His wife, Angua Erika, sits out front in the sand wearing shell earrings and a Coca Cola T-shirt. She sings as she feeds the pigs. It was once a paradise, says Teitiota, but the sea is angry, as though it has been bewitched. "It forces us to starve, to go thirsty and, in the end, to drown."He's talking about the contaminated farmland and contaminated drinking water, and of the diseases that are spreading. Behind his home, he points into the stone well which provided them with fresh water for years -- but which now, with the seawater seeping ever further into the groundwater, is nothing but a salty puddle. He points up into the breadfruit trees and to the palm orchards, from which they used to harvest large, sumptuous nuts, nourishing themselves from the copra, the coconut meat, inside. Now, for kilometer after kilometer along the coast, the leaves in the treetops are brown and dead.Once he has finished building the protective wall, Teitiota kneels in the sand. He looks to the turquoise lagoon and says a quiet prayer, imploring God to spare his homeland for a bit longer, to keep the great flood away. His hands folded before him, he prays that before the water buries everything, his family might find shelter elsewhere.Teitiota doesn't know for sure why the water surrounding the island he lives on keeps coming closer, nor has he calculated how much of his beach disappears under the waves each year. He doesn't know how much time he has left before Tarawa sinks beneath the waves for good.But he has a plan.Potsdam, 94 meters above sea levelThe Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) can be found on Telegraph Mountain, a terminal moraine deposited here in the last ice age. The institute is one of the world's leading climate change research centers and the way the brick building, with its trio of domes, perches on the hilltop is reminiscent of a spaceship that has just landed. Or perhaps an ark.It's the right place to go to learn what the future holds. Researchers from PIK have been warning of the consequences of global warming since 1992. They have advised the German government and provided expertise to the European Commission and other national governments. They are part of international boards, panels and working groups.Their voices are heard. And, sometimes, they are even listened to.Currently, around 200 climate researchers show up every morning, most of them by bicycle, to switch on their computers and begin producing models, projections and concepts. They write code and draft scenarios highlighting the fragility of our societies and the interconnectedness of global systems. And they come up with possible solutions. Through the half-open office doors, you can see young scientists at their computers and the only clue to the region they are focusing on is provided by a photo on display or the occasional screen saver flitting across the screens: the Ganges Delta, the Amundsen Sea or deep in the granite of Svalbard.

Miami SubmergedStefan Rahmstorf was one of the lead authors for the 2007 iteration of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. As a professor of physics of the oceans, he has become well-known in Germany and abroad, making frequent appearances at conferences and in the news, interviewed whenever yet another storm washes away yet another bit of the North Sea island of Sylt.'The Preservation of Human Civilization Is at Stake'In a quiet yet confident voice, Rahmstorf speaks of the end of the world as we know it. "The preservation of human civilization is at stake, that is true," he says.Like most of his colleagues, Stefan Rahmstorf's world is one of comparisons: The curves become ever steeper, the amplitudes ever higher, the deviations from the norm ever more extreme."Unusually high ... systematic developments ... increasing numbers of extreme weather events:" Such are the phrases repeated over and over again in his presentations. The curves on his slides spike upward from left to right like the profit projections of an asset manager. It is the fever chart of the global climate.DER SPIEGEL: How high will sea levels rise?Rahmstorf: In the last 100 years, we have seen a rise of 20 centimeters. We will see that repeat in the next 20 or 30 years. If we quickly limit warming, we could escape in the end with an increase of half a meter. The current U.S. climate report, though, identifies 1 meter as the midrange scenario and 2 meters as the high end.DER SPIEGEL: What does it depend on?Rahmstorf: Whether the Paris Agreement is adhered to and average global warming is limited to significantly below 2 degrees Celsius.DER SPIEGEL: That's not likely.Rahmstorf: And it depends on how the ice sheet in Antarctica behaves.DER SPIEGEL: Rather precariously.Rahmstorf: And it depends on where on the globe you live, on the respective currents and winds. Even if the ocean is essentially the same one everywhere, the same can't be said of land. In some places, the ground is rising, as in Scandinavia, while in others, it is sinking, like along the southern Atlantic coast in the U.S. or along the North Sea.DER SPIEGEL: What's the big deal with a couple of decimeters more or less?Rahmstorf: Even just a couple-centimeter rise in the global sea level increases the risks associated with extreme weather events and makes storm surges and hurricanes more dangerous. Just ask the residents of Bangladesh.Subhdia (Bangladesh), 6 meters above sea levelRising sea levels don't present an insoluble problem for wealthy countries that can afford to protect their coastlines like the Netherlands and Germany. But Bangladesh is anything but prosperous. It is home to twice as many people as Germany crammed into a space that isn't even half as large. Two-thirds of the country is just a few meters above sea level and the majority of the population lives on the coast. In the capital city of Dhaka, the ground is paved over in many areas so that water can no longer run off and the drainage system is often clogged up with plastic bags. Additionally, ground water levels are falling, which has meant that the already low-lying city is sinking even further. When monsoon rains bloat the rivers, up to a quarter of the country floods. And when a dam breaks, villages can remain under water for years at a time. Some schoolchildren in the country have gotten used to wading home through chest-high water with their backpacks on their heads. The farmers and fishermen make their living from and with the floods and have learned to tell the difference between good ones and bad ones. Good floods water the fields, but bad floods have become more frequent, washing away bridges and houses while driving away humans and animals. The frequency and intensity of flooding in the country will continue to increase. Last year, around 150 people died during the monsoon, with many millions suffering the effects.When the sea level rises, entire regions could be submerged in 30 years and food production may collapse, forcing millions of people to emigrate. Dhaka is now home to the International Center for Climate Change and Development, an institute that has begun to advise farmers to raise ducks instead of chickens, to farm fish instead of rice and to collect rainwater because fresh water is becoming scarcer. Years ago, researchers already began developing rice hybrids that can flourish in salt water.

London SubmergedIn the last several years, the country has built more than 2,000 protective shelters along with thousands of kilometers of new dikes. There are floating gardens, hospitals on boats and homes on stilts. Already, Bangladeshis in many areas of the country have long since begun living their lives in the upper floors of their homes because the ground floor is underwater. Subhdia is located near the coast in the country's southwest, and thus in one of the most danger-prone regions of Bangladesh. Houses on stilts with roofs of straw line the shores. A woman wades through the water dragging a net behind her. Her name is Shulota Mandol, a small, roundish woman with a broad smile. She says she is now 47, the exact same age as her country -- and just as experienced when it comes to dealing with storm surges.During the monsoon, she says, they hang their pots and rice from the ceiling and elevate the fireplace. They ram bamboo rods into the mud and build bridges, she says, adding that she can't remember a time when she wasn't wet. On one occasion, a storm cracked her house in two; on another, a cyclone took away all the family's possessions. Two years later, a wave -- taller than a man -- rolled through the village and the storm surge took away her house. And then? "Then we rebuilt it, but out of wood this time." Many of the hopes harbored by climate policy experts rest on the resilience of people like Mandol.Two years ago, though, the Bangladeshi government had an idea along with a bit of money and it commissioned the aid organization Adams to carry out an experiment. They began pumping sediment out of the river and onto the banks, thus reducing the water level.Since then, Mandol's home and the surrounding villages are all 1 meter higher. When it rains, the water flows off downhill. The chicken coop is on stilts and the outhouse on a block of cement.Mandol is now able to plant bananas, whereas the trees used to just rot. The temple next to the house is also now elevated. Mandol has sacrificed part of her most valuable possession to her god: a dry bit of land.Potsdam Anders Levermann is a climate physicist at the Potsdam Institute and he also teaches at Columbia University. The illustrations that go along with this article are primarily based on his calculations.DER SPIEGEL: A sea level rise of several meters: Is that what is awaiting us?Levermann: That's what will happen if we continue on as we have been. But even then, it will only come in a few hundred years. Ultimately, after all, the sea level rise is a question of scale.DER SPIEGEL: That sounds comforting.Levermann: But we're talking here about oceans, enormous volumes of water. There is a vast amount of stagnancy involved and stagnancy is slow. Just imagine a sloth. But stagnancy combined with immensity, that is more like a boulder rolling downhill. It starts moving, accelerates, and then it can no longer be stopped. The amount of greenhouse gases we now emit within just a few decades will determine sea levels for many centuries.DER SPIEGEL: For how long have you known that?Levermann: In theory, for quite some time. But then there was that Monday in May 2014. That was a shock for me. I just sat there for a half-hour.On that day, two studies appeared independently of each other about the West Antarctic. One of them had to do with a model while the other presented new measurements. The results were consistent with each other: "Today, we present observational evidence that the (ice sheet) has gone into irreversible retreat," said Eric Rignot of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the main author of one of the studies at a press conference. "It has reached the point of no return."The Potsdam Institute was able to add an important detail.Levermann: There is no natural stabilization mechanism. The glaciologists had suspected that West Antarctica could destabilize. It was a theoretical possibility. But then these measurements indicated that we had likely already passed beyond that tipping point. For us, it was a holy-shit moment.Bremerhaven (Germany), 2 meters above sea level The West Antarctic is ground zero for the rising sea level. As early as the 1970s, the glaciologist John Mercer had warned about the Antarctic ice sheet breaking off. Back then, though, few took him seriously. Today, we know that Mercer's concerns were accurate.In Germany, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research is responsible for studying Antarctica and operates Germany's southernmost workplace, a research station on stilts called Neumayer III. The work done there is coordinated in a building complex in the port of Bremerhaven, located on Germany's North Sea coast. The dikes in Bremerhaven were recently enlarged, which is a direct consequence of what is happening 8,000 nautical miles away in Antarctica -- the same phenomenon that led Ioane Teitiota to construct a wall of sandbags at his island home in the South Pacific. It all has to do with West Antarctica, one of the perhaps decisive motors driving the rise in ocean levels -- one that feels far away, but which has effects close to home.The glaciologist Angelika Humbert is at home in West Antarctica in a manner of speaking, though she is more familiar with the details of the modeled version than the realities of the continent itself. She got her start in quantum physics, but now her focus is on masses of ice measured in the gigatons. Humbert explains how the planet's ice began shifting and what that has to do with the dike out in front of her institute and how it will soon begin affecting the around 600 million people in the world who live in coastal areas.

Osaka SubmergedIt is helpful to imagine West Antarctica as being like a bowl, with the ice inside measuring up to 3 kilometers thick and the bowl's lowest point lying below sea level. The entire bowl is tipped: Inland, the edge of the bowl juts up in the form of a mountain range. But on the other side, the edge doesn't even rise above the surface of the sea. The Circumpolar Current forces relatively warm, salt-rich water over the submerged edge of the bowl, which eats away at the underside of the ice sheet. Pieces of ice break off and float away. More ice flows in from the other side of the bowl.Until 2012, Antarctica would lose around 76 billion tons of ice per year, roughly twice the volume of Lake Constance. Since then, though, according to a recent report in the magazine Nature, this process has accelerated to 219 billion tons. That means that the ice from Antarctica is responsible for around a quarter of the global rise in the sea level. If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to collapse completely, it would translate into a global rise in ocean levels of more than 3 meters. "The fascinating question is how long it would take for that to happen and whether it would happen completely," says Humbert. "We won't have the 3 meters is 50 years, probably not even in 200 years. But that is the potential that is there."The speed of these processes is particularly worrisome. "The glaciologists of the 1950s and 60s could never have imagined such a dynamic," Humbert says. "At the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, the speed has tripled, from 5 kilometers per year to 17. That is extremely fast for glaciologists. And the acceleration has taken place within just a few years."Humbert says she was shocked by her last flight over Greenland: "The loss of ice mass in Greenland has now reached the northeast. You fly over and all you see is a graveyard of icebergs." Last year, a 265-square-kilometer (102-square-mile) iceberg broke off from the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica and floated out into the Amundsen Sea. Sea levels didn't rise as a consequence because the ice had already been lying on the water. But the glacier could no longer play the role of parking brake for the masses of ice further inland. West Antarctica has begun shifting, and it is a process that cannot be stopped any time soon. "The only thing that can be done is slow it down," says Humbert. Potsdam DER SPIEGEL: Humans start something, the dynamic intensifies and at some point, physics takes over.Rahmstorf: Those are the tipping points. Here at the institute, we have identified around 10 of them.DER SPIEGEL: For example?Rahmstorf: The measurable deceleration of the Gulf Stream is one of them, as is the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia. Fellow researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have now discovered that rising ocean levels intensify the erosion of permafrost there. Which then releases methane and carbon dioxide.DER SPIEGEL: Which then warms the planet.Rahmstorf: It is a self-reinforcing process and can hardly be stopped.Munich (Germany), 510 meters above sea levelIn the insurance industry, natural catastrophes are referred to as "Nat Cats." And for the last 30 years, geophysicist Ernst Rauch has been keeping track of them for the insurance company Munich Re. Something really out of the ordinary has to happen to surprise him. Something like Hurricane Sandy.When Hurricane Sandy finally left New York behind on the evening of Oct. 30, 2012, everything had changed. Large parts of Manhattan were flooded, subway tunnels were underwater and even the construction site of the 9/11 museum was hit. The power was out, the trains stopped running and Wall Street suspended trading. A number of factors came together to magnify the storm's destructive power: its sheer strength, the rather unconventional path it followed, the powerful wind front that hit the coast perpendicularly, and a phase of the moon that intensified the storm surge. But the calamity only reached the dimensions that it did because the sea level had risen over the past decades. At Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan, for example, it had risen around 35 centimeters in 93 years, with the trend accelerating. Flood protection was not prepared. Sandy was a key moment for Ernst Rauch and others in his profession. The deluge had arrived, and it had to be priced in. Reinsurance companies are the ones that insure insurance companies. They are needed when the risks are so great that they need to be distributed across several sets of shoulders. Last year was the most expensive one yet for insurance companies, with around $135 billion needed to pay for the damage caused in 2017 by such natural catastrophes as hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. The three most expensive years in the industry's history have all occurred in the last 13 years.Climate change isn't entirely responsible. More people than ever before are living in at-risk areas and their possessions have increased in value. Pointing to the climate, though, does make it easier to convince customers to pay higher premiums. Rauch heads up a team of around 30 scientists who work for the company around the world. Their job is first and foremost that of calculating as precisely as possible the chances that a catastrophe might take place. But secondly, they must put a price tag on the damage that catastrophe might cause. And thirdly, an appropriate premium must be calculated.For all three of those tasks, there is NATHAN, the Natural Hazards Assessment Network, a digital platform that is constantly fed with information relevant for the climate. NATHAN makes it possible to better identify natural risks -- for every address around the world, down to a precision of 30 meters.If, for example, you type in "New York, Battery Park," a wide, blue stripe appears around the southern tip of Manhattan showing the area that will likely be underwater in 100 years. The table next to it shows the "Risk Scores," which indicate the likelihood of flooding. The Risk Score for Battery Park is 38 out of 100. By way of comparison, not far from the French Quarter in New Orleans, which was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Risk Score is 78.Potsdam A woman recently called PIK. She wanted to know if she should buy a piece of property in the Berlin suburb of Spandau and said she wasn't sure because of the rising sea level. You hear such crazy things, she said.And it's true. There are now so many projections, scenarios and counterscenarios that some people haven't been able to keep up. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a good place to start for an overview of what is known, what can be known and what should be done as a consequence.Anders Levermann is one of the 17 scientists belonging to the IPCC's Working Group I, which is responsible for the chapter on oceans and sea level. The IPCC, which is coordinated out of Geneva (390 meters above sea level) is a unique, global effort comparable at most to the Human Genome Project, which mapped the human gene sequence. It is a kind of think tank that issues regular reports on climate change and outlines the current state of knowledge with the greatest possible degree of transparency and with the goal of identifying practical consequences. Currently, IPCC scientists are working on the sixth report, which is being written by 220 leading authors from 60 different countries.Levermann: First, you write down everything that should appear in the report -- with lots of placeholders because science isn't yet at the level we want to deliver. This "Zero Order Draft" is then sent around to colleagues and commented on. After that, a "First Order Draft" is written, already including graphics.DER SPIEGEL: Who is allowed to comment?Levermann: Every scientist can download it and comment. The authors must respond to every comment and each response is made public.DER SPIEGEL: That must translate to hundreds of comments per chapter.Levermann: Up to 10,000, yeah. It is a time consuming and stressful process. After that, the "Second Order Draft" is made public, on which anyone can comment.DER SPIEGEL: And then?Levermann: In the end, a synopsis of two to three dozen pages is produced, the "Summary for Policymakers." It is reviewed by politicians sentence by sentence, word by word, to make sure that all governments can sign it in the end. No politician, though, can change the actual report.Part TwoWhich Places Do We Want to Protect, and Which Ones Aren't Worth the Trouble?

New York City (USA), 10 meters above sea level"Sandy" was the kind of storm that doesn't come around very often. In New York City alone, 43 people died, and 90,000 buildings were flooded. The storm caused almost $20 billion in damage. Once the winds died down and the water receded, the city held crisis meetings, set up working groups and forged ambitious plans. The city council reviewed the flood zone system and changed the building code -- and there was even talk of spending hundreds of millions on flood protection measures. But little has really changed. Indeed, New York is an example of how difficult it is to prepare for something that is improbable and unpredictable. There are a number of ambitious plans that are still waiting to be implemented. They include an 8-kilometer long storm-surge barrier, the Outer Harbor Gateway, which is to seal off the entirety of New York Bay from the Atlantic. A wall through the sea. That is the lesson taught by New York: Don't wait for help from the city. Don't merely assume that a major, overarching solution will be found.Instead, it is up to residents themselves to consider how they can consume less energy at home and produce less CO2. How they can commute in an environmentally friendly way, by bicycle or ferry. How to reduce the burden on the power grid at the local level. And how the city can arm itself against the next flood. Because the next flood will come. The unprotected regions of the U.S. East Coast are already flooded almost every second day, according to measurements taken by the oceanography authority NOAA. New York City is facing an even greater threat than Miami or Fort Lauderdale. The Climate Central research group has calculated that in New York alone, almost a half-million people live in an immediate danger zone that could be completely flooded by 2050. Two of New York's most striking skyscrapers are located just south of the United Nations headquarters, where they rise diagonally into the sky. The copper-clad twin towers with 41 and 48 floors respectively, incline toward each other and are connected at a height of 90 meters by a skybridge. The towers were still in the planning stages when "Sandy" struck, though the lot had already been excavated to a depth of three meters. The hurricane transformed it into a lake within just a couple of hours. "When we first saw it, you could paddle across in a canoe," recalls Simon Koster, one of the engineers involved. "That's when we knew we had to change our plans." The solutions might seem obvious, but they are also unusual. In the case of the crooked skyscrapers, the foundation was dug down to a depth of 15 meters and the subterranean floors were sealed. Instead of the emergency power generators that would have been installed here in the past, the below-ground levels are now home to a multistory parking lot that can be sealed off with steel gates. The building's emergency backup system is located at a safe distance from the water, at a height of 160 meters. The penthouse aerie is filled with five generators, and the walls and windows are lined with banks of electrical switchgear. The 400-kilowatt generators are powered by natural and can supply both towers with electricity without having to tap into the municipal grid. Each of the 760 apartments inside the building is self-sufficient. The refrigerators will remain running no matter what happens as will a single electrical socket in each apartment. As long as they have food and their smartphones still work, residents don't really need to worry about what happens outside their double-glazed windows. Potsdam For centuries, the first thing that came to people's minds in Germany when the water rose was to pour "another scoop of sand on the dike." Today, these barriers are billion-euro miracles of engineering, but the idea behind them is the same. Levermann: A lot of things are possible. The question is: Which places do we want to protect, and which ones aren't worth the trouble?DER SPIEGEL: In other words?Levermann: The Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's city beach, cannot be protected -- it's too open. Or Miami. The city is built on porous ground, so dikes like the ones you have in Holland won't help much there.DER SPIEGEL: What about New Orleans, which Hurricane Katrina flooded within just a couple of hours in 2005?Levermann: New Orleans, with its location in the Mississippi Delta, isn't really suitable for settlement.DER SPIEGEL: One of the largest and most powerful pumping stations, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex, was built there for around $1 billion. An enormous lock gate and 11 pumps, with over 5,000 horsepower each, are operated with diesel. The idea is for the facility to slow down storm surges coming inward from the sea in time, while simultaneously pumping rainwater in the opposite direction.Levermann: A lot of things can be done with money. Above all, though, the facility is a monument to American optimism. Of course, it's easier to rely on engineers than to learn to live differently.Venice (Italy), 1 meter above sea level That is a lesson that humankind is going to have to learn: We won't be able to protect everything. So, what do we give up? Are the Maldives worth the effort? Or the German island of Hallig Hooge in the North Sea? And who gets to decide? Nowhere is this question as urgent as it is in Venice, and nowhere should it be as easy to answer. In fact, in the watery city of Venice, it quickly becomes clear how difficult it can be to be reasonable, even in a situation where there is both plenty of money and no shortage of good ideas. Covering just 7 square kilometers that are crisscrossed by 182 canals and connected by 435 bridges, Venice likely has the world's densest concentration of cultural treasures. The place is a miracle in many respects, but unfortunately a damp one given that the city was built at water level and is sinking steadily. The Venetians are used to flooding. The lagoon swells dozens of times each year, usually by 80 to 100 centimeters, in what Italians call "acqua alta," high water. In an acqua alta of 100 centimeters, St. Mark's Square is covered with 20-centimeter deep water and people are forced to walk around the city in Wellingtons. Rats can be seen scaling Renaissance facades.Venice is to be preserved for posterity. And in 1989, water engineers came up with a solution. It is called MO.S.E. The "Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico," a barrier for the entire lagoon.Each of the lagoon's three openings to the Adriatic is to be equipped with floating barriers, 78 in total. When the sea is calm, the barriers will lie on the sea floor; but when the tide gets higher than 110 centimeters, they will be raised. At the time of the project's planning, the engineers still assumed a global sea level rise of 20 centimeters. Construction began in 2003 and it is still ongoing today. Nobody knows when the flood gates will become operational though the year 2022 is the latest prediction.At the Biblioteca Marciana on St. Mark's Square, one of Italy's oldest libraries, they have drawn up an emergency plan and established a department for prevention and restauration. The library, built in the 16th century directly on the water between the Doge's Palace and Giradini Reali, was inundated once before in the great flood of 1966. Silvia Pugliese is the conservator responsible and she heads the prevention department. The library's most valuable holdings are now housed on the second floor, five meters above where they were back in the 1960s. They include more than 900,000 books, maps and manuscripts, including the will of native Venetian Marco Polo, a Homer edition dating from the 11th century and medieval bibles with jewel-studded covers. Biblioteca Marciana's emergency plan isn't an evacuation plan, because nobody seriously expects Venice to sink into the sea. "MO.S.E. will hold," says Pugliese. And what happens if MO.S.E. does hold, but the lagoon degenerates into a cesspool because the water can no longer circulate? "In Venice," Pugliese says, "decisions have always been made in favor of culture. Not for the benefit of the environment."The Hague (Netherlands), 1 meter above sea levelIf the Netherlands were to be submitted today as a construction project, it would surely never get a permit. At least not in the Netherlands. Half of the country is less than a meter above sea level, a quarter is below, and Rotterdam, the second most important city after Amsterdam was built in a huge delta, where the Rhine, Meuse and Waal rivers flow into the North Sea. Wim Kuijken is the Delta Commissioner. He was born two months before "de Ramp," as they called Holland's great flood. During the night from Jan. 31 to Feb. 1, 1953, a spring tide converged with a nasty storm to create a disastrous scenario not unlike Hurricane Sandy in New York. Eighty-nine dikes failed and 1,835 people died.The calamity taught the country two things. First, you have to protect yourself against the sea to the extent possible. And second, there is no such thing as absolute protection against the sea. It is more powerful than humanity and it always will be. Delta Commissioner Kuijken says that the Netherlands is one of the world's countries most vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, Kuijken says, the Netherlands is safer than most others because people know how vulnerable their country is. And they're prepared to pay for protection.Nearly 10 years ago, the Dutch government approved 1 billion euros in annual flood-protection spending for the "Delta Program." Dunes are constantly being widened, dikes reinforced, and beaches expanded. What makes the Dutch approach revolutionary is that it is based on both technology and imagination. Roofs are being planted with vegetation and lawns are laid out so that the cities function like sponges when the water does come. In the village of Kinderdijk, a multistory parking lot is being built inside a dike, combining urban and spatial planning with design and aesthetics. They are rethinking their relationship with the sea and nature. The point is no longer to fight the water, but to live with it. Parking garages are built to act as reservoirs during floods and public spaces turn into water retention basins. It is an effective combination of experience, wisdom and money. The more they do, the more clearly the Dutch see that the knowledge of how to live with water also presents business opportunities. To get a better idea of the transformations that have become necessary, it helps to take a short walk through Rotterdam with Piet Dircke. He has spent the past 25 years working for Arcadis, a provider of engineering services and project management. The company employs 27,000 people around the world and Dircke has the nice-sounding title of "Global Leader -- Water Management." It's his job to sell Dutch solutions outside the Netherlands, and the market is as big as the problem. The megaports of Asia, in particular, are at risk, including Shanghai, Mumbai and Osaka. Arcadis signed a framework agreement with the city of New Orleans in 2004, coincidentally just one day before Hurricane Katrina got going. As soon as the city government was able to get back to work, it commissioned Arcadis with the task of making New Orleans "hurricane-proof." It was the Dutch who built the world's largest pumping station that Anders Levermann had told us about in Potsdam. As part of the project, plans were drawn up for hundreds of kilometers of dikes, five storm protection dams and huge flood gates. As many as 350 people were working on 65 different projects simultaneously at the Arcadis office in New Orleans. Dircke refers to it as "playing the orange card." It is a reference to Holland's national color.Texel (Netherlands), 2 meters above sea levelMarc van Rijsselberghe is one of the people looking for solutions. In Den Hoorn, the southernmost village on the North Sea island of Texel, van Rijsselberghe sets a plate of tomatoes on the table. For the past few years, he has been experimenting with growing plants in salty soil. He uses saltwater to irrigate various crops growing on open fields and in greenhouses -- tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, lettuce, potatoes and others. He's trying to figure out how much salt plants can bear. If sea levels rise and the groundwater becomes contaminated, then agriculture will also have to adapt. The plate with the tomato wedges is part of his strategy. Van Rijsselberghe, who knows the skepticism and stubbornness of many farmers and politicians, relies on numbers and taste as well as reason and emotion. Already, 1.5 billion hectares worldwide are affected by salinization, he says, with another three hectares added each minute. It is estimated that crop losses attributed to salinization are at $27 billion annually. As such, van Rijsselberghe says, we have to learn how to produce more while using less water.When van Rijsselberghe first grew interested in agriculture, there was a generally accepted limit to the salt content of water: 1.7 deciSiemens per meter. Beyond that, it was thought, plants die. At this point, van Rijsselberghe pushes the plate with the pieces of tomato across the table. They were irrigated with water that has considerably higher concentrations of salt than 1.7 deciSiemens. And the tomatoes actually do taste a little sweet -- at least they're not as salty as one might expect. "I believe that the sea has more power and vitality than we think," he says. "Come with me to the balcony," hollers Peter van Wingerden, who has rented a factory floor on the northern edge of the Rotterdam harbor for his project. In a few weeks, van Wingerden's floating farm is to open here in the Merwehaven, with 40 cows, perhaps even 55, housed in an automated glass show farm that will be three stories tall and firmly anchored to the harbor bed. From the balcony, van Wingerden points to the warehouse on the other side where the kiwis that are shipped to Rottterdam are stored. They are then loaded onto trucks and driven to Italy, where they are peeled and sliced. The truck then returns to the Netherlands. Is it possible, van Wingerden asks, that this form of consumption makes no sense? That we need to rethink things in a world where water levels are rising and land is becoming scarce? The deluge forces us to think in terms of cycles and partnerships. In addition to grass, van Wingerden's cows are also to be fed with brewery residues along with waste from restaurants or from local grain mills. The football club Feyenoord plans to supply the grass clippings from its seven club stadiums, which it will trade for dairy products from Wingerden's floating farm. The cows are to be milked by robots, and they will also be used to collect urine and manure. Van Wingerden wants to squeeze the water out of the dung and then filter the salt out of the water. He then plans to sell the salt as fertilizer and then direct the water back into the Meuse River. Perhaps the fact that large parts of the Netherlands are already below sea level is an advantage. Perhaps is focuses the mind. Because people who live five meters below sea level tend to have a different view of our rising oceans than those who live half a meter above sea level. "Let's expand the world into the water," Van Wingerden shouts from the balcony. "Let's embrace the water! Let's stop fighting it and use it instead. We owe a lot to the water." Potsdam Ottmar Edenhofer is the chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a former Jesuit priest. It's the kind of background that can be helpful when probing humanity's most pressing questions. Questions like what is right? What should be done? How do you protect as much as possible in an unequal and imperfect world? DER SPIEGEL: You recently became one of PIK's two directors. What are the most urgent tasks we face today?Edenhofer: Of course, we have to raise the dikes, relocate roads and shift to a more resilient agriculture. But that's not enough. The man-made destabilization of our climate is a fundamental problem. And we need to act accordingly.DER SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that in concrete terms?Edenhofer: We need to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. This would make CO2-free technology cheaper. Fossil fuels would become more expensive.DER SPIEGEL: Do you believe that higher taxes, whatever the reason, are politically viable?Edenhofer: Carbon dioxide pricing would generate revenues that could be used to lower taxes and reduce national debt, for example. People are quite ready for it. You just have to make clear what is happening with the money.South Tarawa (Kiribati), 2 meters above sea levelIoane Teitiota -- this citizen of one of the flattest and most remote countries on Earth, one that could hardly be located any further from the scientists in Potsdam -- has a plan. He wants the world to know what is coming its way. Not just the flooding, but also the people and nations that will be forced to flee from climate change. From his bamboo hut, Teitiota has sued the United Nations. He is seeking to become the first person ever to be declared a climate refugee. He has sought asylum in New Zealand and is now seeking it worldwide because it is becoming difficult to live in his homeland, with the sea now seeping into the groundwater and the only things hanging from the palm trees are dead leaves.Thus far, the people fleeing from Kiribati have not been recognized as refugees by any country in the world. The Geneva Conventions offers protection only to those who are persecuted on the grounds of their race, religion, nationality or political convictions. The Supreme Court of New Zealand ultimately ruled that none of those things apply in Teitiota's case. But Teitiota refuses to give up. He wants the UN to amend its 1951 convention to include the term "climate refugee." He knows full well that his case, focusing as it does on a major issue to which no country in the world has provided a binding answer, is running up against a legal loophole in international law. Yet it is a question that will only become more pressing in the future: Do people fleeing from droughts or floods have the same right to protection as those escaping wars or persecution? At the 2017 UN World Climate Conference in Bonn, where Kiribati's former president also spoke, UN experts estimated that 20 million people are already fleeing heat, drought, storms or floods. A World Bank study has warned that this figure could reach more than 140 million by 2050. They are the inhabitants of the islands in the Pacific -- Kiribati, Tuvalu, Samoa, Nauru, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands -- who contribute the least to global warming and yet their lives are already threatened by increasingly violent cyclones. Just like the inhabitants of the three atoll settlements London, Paris and Poland. They fled to South Tarawa like tens of thousands of others from all parts of the archipelago. The capital of Kiribati is already one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Close to 5,000 people live within one square kilometer, almost as many as in Hong Kong, only without running water or apartments in skyscrapers. The population of Kiribati is growing, even as the amount of inhabitable land is shrinking. Three years ago, the government of Kiribati purchased 25 square kilometers of land on an island in Fiji, a distant neighbor, for the equivalent of 6.5 million euros. It's intended as land for refuge -- the kind of promised land Ioane Teitiota has been asking God for every day. The country is already using that land to cultivate grains and coconut palms to secure food supplies for its people. According to the country's plan, most inhabitants are to be resettled on the foreign island by 2040. The name given by the Kiribati government for its emigration program is "migration with dignity," which the country's new president feels is nicer than the word "flight." Teitiota is standing at his beach again in front of the wall of sandbags as the sun sets on the ocean's horizon. "There must be enough room someplace in the world," he says. The sea now lies calmly in front of him, as if it has been stretched until smooth. God willing, he says, he'd even go to Germany. By Uwe Buse, Hauke Goos, Laura Höflinger, Alexander Jung, Timofey Neshitov, Marc Pitzke, Claas Relotius and Alexander Smoltczyk

Both Western and Eastern central banks are now fully supporting gold. Precious metals investors can with total confidence buy and hold physical gold, silver and platinum in the firm knowledge that central banks both in the West and the East will by their actions guarantee that the price can only go up. But the support from West and East is very different. Western central banks have not been friendly to gold for decades as they have significantly reduced their holdings.As the chart below shows, central banks’ total gold holdings went from a peak of 38,000 tonnes in the early 1960s to 30,000 tonnes in 2006. The sellers were almost exclusively Western banks.

What the chart above also shows is that the central banks were selling into a falling market and in fact causing the rapid drop in the gold price. Both the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank sold most of their gold at the very lows. So much for Western Central Banks understanding gold!

MONEY PRINTING IS SUPPORTIVE FOR GOLD

So how can Western banks be seen as supportive of gold when they sold for 40 years? For two reasons. Firstly they ceased selling physical gold in the late 1990s and early 2000s and are thus no longer pushing the price of gold down overtly. But they are of course actively selling gold in the paper market.Secondly and more importantly, they have through their irresponsible actions of money printing and credit expansion created the perfect backdrop for an accelerating currency debasement in the next 5-7 years which will continue to make gold more valuable in fiat money.

THE HIGHER THE DEBT THE HIGHER GOES GOLD

Debt has grown exponentially since Nixon’s fatal decision to end the gold backing of the dollar and the currency system in 1971. The chart below shows how debt is now reaching intolerable levels. Just in this century, debt has trebled from $80 trillion to $250 trillion today. Since 2006 when the financial crisis started, debt has doubled.

With manipulated interest rates from negative to just a few percentage points in most countries, the interest burden is already more than most nations can afford. The 35 year interest cycle turned up in 2015 and we are now likely to reach at least the 15-16% as in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

GALLOPING DEBT CANNOT BE FINANCED

Let’s assume that debt will “only” double between today and 2030. Probably much too conservative with the problems that the world will encounter in the next decade. Nevertheless, a doubling would mean global debt of $500 trillion by the late 2020s. Half a quadrillion debt is a figure that virtually nobody can fathom today. But let us assume that interest rates go to 15% “only” by that time. That would mean a global interest bill of $75 trillion! If we relate that to current global GDP of $80 trillion, it means that the future interest cost would almost be equal to today’s global production of goods and services.It is likely that global GDP will have increased by then but an implosion of the world economy could easily reduce GDP by 30-50%. The biggest reason for GDP to increase in nominal terms would be hyperinflation. But hyperinflation normally only lasts a few years and thereafter an implosion of the economy follows. We can speculate about these figures, but nobody will be able to forecast the exact course of events. What is very clear though is that the world will not be in a position to finance the enormous debts that it will face in the next ten years.The consequences will be unlimited money printing leading to the final destruction of paper money since the creation of the Fed in 1913. Remember that all major currencies are already down 97-99% against gold in the last 100 years. The remaining fall of 1-3% will take place within the next 10 years and probably within the next 5-7 years. But what is important to understand is that 1-3% measured from 1913 is 100% from today which means that currencies will go to ZERO.

A TOTAL CATASTROPHE OF THE CURRENCY SYSTEM

As von Mises said in 1949:

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

So there we have it, “a final and total catastrophe of the currency system”. This is what we the world will experience in coming years. Nobody must believe that it is different today and that central banks won’t let it happen. On the contrary, it is central banks that have created this situation and will guarantee that it will happen. This is nothing new in history, all “paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value of ZERO” as Voltaire said in 1729.For example in 180 to 280 AD, the silver Denarius went from almost 100% silver content to 0%. This is how the Romans printed money. So it is a major mistake to believe that it will not happen this time after the biggest global credit expansion in history.The consequence will be that all currencies will become virtually worthless just like in Venezuela today. And gold will shine like it always has by maintaining purchasing power as the currencies become totally debased. Because of the severity of the coming crisis, gold and the other precious metals are likely do a lot better than just maintaining purchasing power. Venezuela, an oil rich and once prosperous country, has collapsed economically, politically and morally under the socialist regime. Around 80% of the people don’t get enough food and both crime and disease are rampant.So the above explains how Western Central Banks will underwrite the gold price also in coming years. And the East, which has understood the consequences of foolish Western policies for quite some time, continue to buy quantities which almost equal the annual mine production of gold. As the Chart shows below, China has bought 17,000 tonnes of gold since 2008. China’s purchases have accelerated since 2013. In the six years between 2013 and 2018 China bought 13,000 tonnes which is virtually total global mine production excluding China’s own.

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WESTERN BANKS REDUCING GOLD HOLDINGS

Western central banks are clearly still reducing their physical gold holdings. We see regular high exports coming out of the UK. There are no gold mines of any significance in the UK. So the exports are clearly central bank gold held in London which is either leased to the market or sold covertly. This gold is bought by primarily China and India who ship the 400 oz bars to Switzerland to be broken down to 1 kg bars for onward export to the East. The chart below show that the UK exported 88 tonnes to Switzerland in October and the US 32 tonnes.

In 2017 Switzerland bought more gold from the UK than any other country and this must be mostly central bank gold.

Thus the pattern is clear, gold continues to flow from West to East in big quantities. Countries like China, India, Russia, Thailand and Turkey are unlikely to stop buying gold. All these nations understand the importance of gold and will continue to accumulate most of the gold production in the world.

NEXT PHASE – GOLD BUYING IN WEST AND EAST

As the West accelerates its currency debasement by the massive money printing which will take place in the next 3 to 7 years, gold buying also in the West will grow substantially. So we will have gold demand coming both from the East and the West. Add to that the panic which will follow when paper gold holders ask for delivery from the banks and futures exchanges. We know that there is much less than 1% physical gold available to cover all the paper gold. The demand from East and West combined with panic in the paper gold market, will lead to gold only being available at prices which will be multiples of the current price. Whether that price in today’s money will be $10,000, $50,000 or much more is not worth speculating about. But what is clear is that gold at $1,220 is an absolute bargain.BANKS CONTINUING TO BLOCK CLIENT ASSETS

In my article last week, I discuss how we see Western banks blocking client assets. This is now happening more frequently and this week another person got in touch with us with a similar problem. He has for over four weeks tried to transfer a six figure sum out of a major European bank in order to buy gold. But the bank has until now refused to make the transfer, giving a number of different excuses. The frequency of these cases is clearly accelerating and this is a very strong warning signal that banks will make it increasingly more difficult for clients to take out money or other assets like gold. Please read my article from last week and take the necessary actions to protect your assets before it is too late. I want to stress that every case I mention are cases where we have had direct personal contact with the person who has suffered the injustice.I sometimes see the odd comment that we are only saying this to attract clients. Let me categorically state that this is absolute nonsense. We set up the system of buying and storing precious metals outside the financial system 17 years ago, in early 2002. At that time we devised the safest system possible for the purpose of protecting our own assets and the assets of our partners. So the system was created for private use. We only opened it to the public in 2006 because of demand from many contacts around the world who wanted to preserve their wealth. Thus we had no intention at the beginning to make it a commercial venture open to outside investors.But just like Jim Sinclair, we feel passionate about helping other people to preserve wealth before it is too late. My good friend Jim has been preaching this message for many years just like myself. Jim calls it GOTS – Get Out of The System. GOTS goes a lot further than just gold and you can find out about it on Jim’s website.Most people are not protected and very few own gold. But there are of course families who have been through wars, confiscation of all assets, bank failures and hyperinflation and therefore understand that gold is life insurance. We have many clients whose family has owned gold since well before 1971 when gold was still $35.There is very little time now to take the necessary protection. As bubble assets start imploding so will debt markets and the system will come under more pressure than it can take.So please, please, protect yourself and get out of the system while it is still possible!

This is what happens when parliamentary democracies shuffle off responsibility

Philip Stephens

So this is what they meant by taking back control. Theresa May’s government has drawn up plans to allocate space on European ferries arriving at the British port of Dover. Trucks carrying medicines will get permits to make the crossing from Calais; so too, perhaps, those with components for vital business supply chains. Britain’s consumers have been warned. There will not be enough room for luxuries such as fresh fruit and vegetables.Crashing out of the EU in March without a deal would see the restoration overnight of Britain’s national sovereignty. This surely would be Brexit at its purest — manna for those in Mrs May’s party seeking a complete rupture with the continent. Decisions on the opening and closing of ports and borders would be a matter for the Westminster government alone. Britain, in the lurid language of the Brexiters, would have cast off the shackles. So runs the theory. Now the reality is beginning to impose itself. Calais-Dover by a large measure is Britain’s most important trade route. It operates with the consent and co-operation of France. Whitehall officials estimate the inevitable post-Brexit imposition at Calais of EU checks and controls would cut traffic — imports to, as well as exports from, Britain — by more than four-fifths. The effect would be to choke off supplies to much of British business and leave stranded in France much of the produce destined for British supermarket shelves. So much for sovereignty.For the prime minister such horror stories — and this is one of many — are the only argument she has for the dismal deal she has negotiated with the EU27. It is not enough. The closer Brexit looms, the more obvious the prospective damage to the nation’s prosperity and security. Mrs May’s agreement would delay some of the consequences and throw a veil over others. Taken in the round, it is a charade — a hapless attempt to wish away the yawning gulf between abstract concepts of sovereignty and real national power.Those tuning in to the parliamentary debate on the agreement could be forgiven for thinking the only big problem is a so-called backstop arrangement to guarantee an open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. In truth, the backstop is simply a proxy for the wrangling about sovereignty. The vital substance of Britain’s decades-long engagement with Europe has been lost to arcane debates about supposed sovereignty. The Britain sought by the Brexiters is one of impotent isolation — a nation with an untrammelled right to harm itself.In any event, MPs look set to throw out the prime minister’s package. The Conservative party’s Kamikaze Brexiters are clinging on to their Elizabethan fantasies of a “global Britain”. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, is as reactionary as any in his views of Europe. Where English nationalists see an attempt by Brussels to suborn democracy, Mr Corbyn spies a vicious capitalist plot against the working classes. Most Labour MPs scorn their leader’s conspiracy theories, but then shrug their shoulders and vote along party lines.The signs are there is a majority against a disorderly Brexit that would see Britain crash out of the Union. But to what purpose? Mrs May’s tortuous compromises have probably killed off the idea of a muddle-through Brexit. There might be just enough votes for an arrangement with the EU roughly comparable to that of Norway. But where is the political leadership to marshal such a majority? Brexit has already done immeasurable damage to Britain’s international standing. Things could now get worse. What are friends and allies to make of the present spectacle in parliament? There could surely be nothing more humiliating than the failure of its politicians to agree among themselves as to the terms of Britain’s departure.This is what happens when parliamentary democracies seek to shrug off responsibility. Referendums undermine political pluralism. As Margaret Thatcher used to say, they are a favourite device of demagogues and dictators. The so-called will of the people reduces liberal democracy to majoritarianism. In this case, parliament is now being asked to approve a divorce with Europe that most MPs believe will make the nation poorer and weaker.As irony would have it, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice may have thrown a lifeline. The British government, he has advised, would be permitted by the EU treaty to withdraw unilaterally its Article 50 request to leave the EU. The Court’s judges have still to offer a final opinion, but precedent suggests they are likely to agree. Therein lies the opportunity for the prime minister to take back control.Her last act in Downing Street — it is hard to see how she could long remain in office in the wake of a Commons defeat — could be to prepare to rescind Brexit. As a caretaker prime minister, Mrs May could ask the EU27 to stop the clock while the nation voted in the referendum it was denied in 2016 — a clear and transparent choice between sovereign isolation and the sometimes uncomfortable empowerment that comes with membership of the EU. Mrs May had hoped her legacy would be that of the leader who took thecountry through Brexit while avoidinga violent rupture in the Conservative party. That cause is lost. History will anyway be a lot kinder if she gives the country the chance to think again.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Sun Tzu

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.